It had nothing to do with power and everything to do with truth. I had the deep, unshakable sense that this is real politics - unscripted, unrehearsed. The way your eyes well up when those arrested with you begin to sing: “Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom.” The way your breath quickens when the officer reads you your Miranda rights.
This is not just arrest, rinse, repeat. To say that is to dismiss the way your heart hammers when your arms are pinned behind your back, your belongings dropped into a large Ziploc bag and your body shoved into the back of an unventilated paddy wagon. A black man’s right to vote into office an official who recognizes his humanity. A child’s right to go to school without the fear of being gunned down by an AR-15. A woman’s right to control her own ovaries. After all, these were our freedoms being coolly dissected. I watched as protesters around me began to spring to their feet and yell their remarks: “Senators, we demand you vote no!" and "Sham president, sham justice!” When I jumped up to disrupt the proceedings, it wasn’t so much a decision as the feeling that I had no other choice. With so much at stake, protesting isn't a choice While we sat nervously with our eyes on the officers surrounding us, Kavanaugh seemed to hardly break a sweat. Smith Goes to Washington.” It makes you realize how easily a political system can slide toward tyranny without so much as a senator raising his voice. In the hearing room, it felt almost as though the other protesters and I were watching a dramatic re-enactment and not a real-life political proceeding - like some dystopic remake of “Mr. What they don’t tell you in your eighth-grade civics classes is that beyond the ballot boxes, so much of American politics is given over to men playing out a well-rehearsed script. Ten minutes later I was in the Hart Senate Office Building, watching a suited Kavanaugh reply to the senators’ questions.
I told them no, that I had an afternoon bus booked back to New York but that I’d go in to film the arrests. One of them asked whether I was there to do civil disobedience, risking arrest.
The organizers leading the mass action against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation moved down the line of protesters with paperwork for those ready to disrupt the hearing.
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